Today we are excited to announce the public preview of live events within Microsoft Teams. A live event delivers one-to-many video and content streaming to a large online audience while providing centralized control of the shared attendee experience. Live events now empower every organizer,

from Microsoft Teams users all the way to webcasting professionals. Attendees can join the experience where they are: through Stream, in Yammer or in Teams.

In this preview, Teams will have the ability for organizers to create an event with the appropriate attendee permissions, designate fellow event team members and invite attendees.

Live event production: Organizers will ultimately have multiple choices in production methods:

Quick start. The quick start setting enables users to produce their live events using the Teams client. This option is best to facilitate remote participants or if there is a need to use USB audio/video devices connected to a PC.

External encoder (coming soon). External encoders can be used by producers to manage their live events with 3rd party hardware and software via Microsoft Stream. The service will support studio quality equipment (e.g. media mixers) that can stream to a Real-time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) This option is typically used in large scale events such as company all-hands – where a single stream from a media mixer is broadcasted from multiple in-room inputs. This live event method will be available over the next month.

Planning live events in Microsoft Teams. Live events in Teams empowers multiple roles to successfully broadcast and participate in an event, including the following: organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee.

Organizer. The organizer manages the live event end to end. This includes creating the event with appropriate attendee permissions, choosing the production method, inviting event team members and attendees and managing event reports. Event reports will include both recording and attendance reports. With real-time captions & translation (coming soon), the organizer can also specify whether live event attendees can view captions in the supported languages.

Organize a new live event in Microsoft Teams

Organizer view - production options

Producer. As a host of the meeting, producers ensure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the media sources that are sent to the event. Additional capabilities include:

Start / Stop

Share own video

Share participant video

Share active desktop/window

Select layouts

Chat with other event team members

View live attendee count

Moderate Q & A

Toggle captions on/off for live event attendees (coming soon)

Producer (Quick start) view

Producer (External encoder) view

Presenter. Presenters send audio, video and/or screen sharing into the live event that uses quick start production method. A presenter can also moderate Q & A.

Presenter view

Attendee. Attendees can experience the event live, using DVR controls or on-demand. Attendees can also interact with the presenters using Teams Q & A or Yammer. Microsoft Teams users will be able to join the live event from the web, desktop and mobile clients.

Attendee view

Optimize Bandwidth for the Enterprise Network. Live events will support 3rd party eCDN providers including Hive, Kollective and Ramp (coming soon). These providers partner closely with Microsoft and ensure users have a high-quality experience over your network.

What’s next for Skype Meeting Broadcast. Live events with Microsoft 365 will replace the capabilities provided by Skype Meeting Broadcast. For the public preview release of live events, Microsoft will continue to support Skype Meeting Broadcast, with no disruption in service for new or future events. We encourage you to try out live event in Teams to leverage new features including desktop/window sharing and use of 3rd party software/hardware encoders.

Try out a live event today as part of your Teams meetings experience. Documentation on live events is available for IT Pros here.

Today we are excited to announce the public preview of live events within Microsoft Teams. A live event delivers one-to-many video and content streaming to a large online audience while providing centralized control of the shared attendee experience. Live events now empower every organizer,

from Microsoft Teams users all the way to webcasting professionals. Attendees can join the experience where they are: through Stream, in Yammer or in Teams.

In this preview, Teams will have the ability for organizers to create an event with the appropriate attendee permissions, designate fellow event team members and invite attendees.

Live event production: Organizers will ultimately have multiple choices in production methods:

Quick start. The quick start setting enables users to produce their live events using the Teams client. This option is best to facilitate remote participants or if there is a need to use USB audio/video devices connected to a PC.

External encoder (coming soon). External encoders can be used by producers to manage their live events with 3rd party hardware and software via Microsoft Stream. The service will support studio quality equipment (e.g. media mixers) that can stream to a Real-time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) This option is typically used in large scale events such as company all-hands – where a single stream from a media mixer is broadcasted from multiple in-room inputs. This live event method will be available over the next month.

Planning live events in Microsoft Teams. Live events in Teams empowers multiple roles to successfully broadcast and participate in an event, including the following: organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee.

Organizer. The organizer manages the live event end to end. This includes creating the event with appropriate attendee permissions, choosing the production method, inviting event team members and attendees and managing event reports. Event reports will include both recording and attendance reports. With real-time captions & translation (coming soon), the organizer can also specify whether live event attendees can view captions in the supported languages.

Organize a new live event in Microsoft Teams

Organizer view - production options

Producer. As a host of the meeting, producers ensure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the media sources that are sent to the event. Additional capabilities include:

Start / Stop

Share own video

Share participant video

Share active desktop/window

Select layouts

Chat with other event team members

View live attendee count

Moderate Q & A

Toggle captions on/off for live event attendees (coming soon)

Producer (Quick start) view

Producer (External encoder) view

Presenter. Presenters send audio, video and/or screen sharing into the live event that uses quick start production method. A presenter can also moderate Q & A.

Presenter view

Attendee. Attendees can experience the event live, using DVR controls or on-demand. Attendees can also interact with the presenters using Teams Q & A or Yammer. Microsoft Teams users will be able to join the live event from the web, desktop and mobile clients.

Attendee view

Optimize Bandwidth for the Enterprise Network. Live events will support 3rd party eCDN providers including Hive, Kollective and Ramp (coming soon). These providers partner closely with Microsoft and ensure users have a high-quality experience over your network.

What’s next for Skype Meeting Broadcast. Live events with Microsoft 365 will replace the capabilities provided by Skype Meeting Broadcast. For the public preview release of live events, Microsoft will continue to support Skype Meeting Broadcast, with no disruption in service for new or future events. We encourage you to try out live event in Teams to leverage new features including desktop/window sharing and use of 3rd party software/hardware encoders.

Try out a live event today as part of your Teams meetings experience. Documentation on live events is available for IT Pros here.

1. Pre-registration for live events - in the roadmap

2. Asking anonymous attendees to provide name & email - in the roadmap

Hello everyone ! I used "live events" until last thursday. I tried to create a new live meeting with Teams and I just see the function has disapeared ! I'm still in the "developper mode". All people from my organization has lost this ability to create/manage live events.

Do you know if we can hope it back soon or has it been removed for ever from this app ?

Are the links to Teams Recordings under the same governance as Anonymous SharePoint links?

It appears that when open a Teams Live recording in a web browser, it is an anonymous link. We've shared that anonymous link with external partners and it's worked fine up until now, about 70 days later, when a partner notified us that the links don't work anymore.

I'm trying to figure out why, and how to manage sharing these videos externally. We have set anonymous links in SharePoint to expire after 60 days in our tenant. Is this rule governing the Teams Live Event Recording links as well???

@Jeff MacPhail the same attendee link that’s shared with attendees for them to watch the event live, can also be used for allowing them to watch on demand. The recording link from meeting details page is only for producers to download the recording and shouldn’t be shared with the attendees. Can the partner still access the event on-demand using the original join link?

I really like the sound of Live Events and can already envision many useful use cases in Education and Business.Most of the Education clients I work with have Education A1 plans which it's not supported in yet.One of the Corporate clients I work with has Office 365 Business Premium account and currently uses Skype Broadcast effectively however this plan however doesn't have Live Events. Will it ever? If Skype Broadcast disappears does that mean there is no alternative?

Since Teams Live Events is the one for one replacement for Skype Broadcast, I would have to assume that at some point when Skype for Business is sunset that Teams with Live Events will be enabled for all licenses that previously had Skype Broadcast. As for timing? That's a question for Microsoft.

Is this feature available for users on Office365 Business Premium edition? when trying to start a live event to test the functionality I get the you do not have a license please contact your IT admin, of which I am the admin ;)

The policy in the admin centre page for live events is set to allow all everyone in the organisation to start live events.

I really like the live broadcast solution and used it previously in Skype for Business. In Teams the Captions option is missing when I try to set up a live event. Am I missing something that is needed to enable this? we have the preview features option enabled in the admin centre.

I really like the live broadcast solution and used it previously in Skype for Business. In Teams the Captions option is missing when I try to set up a live event. Am I missing something that is needed to enable this? we have the preview features option enabled in the admin centre.

While it would be technically possible to do via screen sharing, it would be good to be able to present in static images too. The use case would be for intro screens and to have something visible in the presentation while presenter video is not showing. The could also be done as a overlay (image with transparency) to do basic lower thirds.

I know there are differences between the a1, a3, and a5 licenses, however, I was wondering if there is any way to do live events with an a1 license? Do to the COVID-19 crisis, I'm looking into one-to-many presentation programs for events that need to be held virtually.

Private Events - If Teams Live Events just a Teams License and this is included in A1 (for faculty and student)

So you need at least one license to create the live event. From here you are good to go. Public Events are not listed anywhere. It means you just have to know the URL and this one is not guessable. If your students don't have an account (like mine 1-4th grade here in Germany) only A3 accounts are needed for the teachers creating the event. Presenters are good with an A1 license too (as far as I know).

@GerardW There doesn't appear to be any way to do that. Best practice is to have anyone not presenting mute themselves, but you can download the video file and edit it after the fact as well, if needed.

Has anyone successfully been able to add an AAD guest account by invite only to a Teams Live Event? I've tried in two tenants - one with the guest registered with OTP, one with the guest registered as a Microsoft account. In both cases, they can authenticate to the webcast but they're then taken right back to the Sign-In screen.

@GerardW Any conversation will be broadcast. For private communications, it's best to use the meeting chat function (text). The biggest issue that I've run into is that producers can mute people, but can't unmute them - they have to unmute themselves.

@David Phillips I've just been trying to add users outside the organisation and it can easily be done as a phone in (with appropriate licence) and the user can have voice access only as a contributor, we can only see people in the organisation if we try to add other people.

You can add a guest account to a Team set up just for that purpose and they then can attend the live event, then you could remove them later.